Truth or Poop: Interesting Insects - James Warwood - ★★★★

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AUTHOR-ILLUSTRATOR: James Warwood

GENRE: Children's Nonfiction, Humour
RATING: 4 Stars.

In a Nutshell: As entertaining and as educational as expected.

Last year, I had binge-read the first three books of the Truth or Poop series: Amazing Animal Facts, SpectacularSpace, and Gloriously Gross Facts. The books were highly entertaining as well as informative, so here I go again, trying out the fourth book.

The format is the same. We have fifty “Facts”, and we are supposed to guess if it is ‘Truth or Poop’. When we turn the page over, we get an answer to the question along with a fairly detailed explanation.

As this book is titled ‘Interesting Insects’, all the facts herein are about insects. Well, no, that’s not exactly right. We also have arachnids such as spiders and molluscs such as snails making an appearance. But before I could dock off stars from the book for making a biological booboo, the author himself explained, in one of the “Facts” why he included other creatures in an insect book. Gotta give him credit for honesty!

While a few of the facts were already known to me, plenty of them came with greater details, and some, I had never heard about., My favourite one was about the gum leaf skeletoniser moth – a little creature totally deserving of that mouthful of a name.

The author has a great sense of humour, and this shows not just in the questions but also in the funny illustrations accompanying each question (sketched by the author himself) and in the detailed explanatory note.

I attempted a few questions of this book on my own, and the remaining with my animal-loving daughter for company. I realised that the book delivers far better satisfaction with company, because you can laugh together, learn together, feel stunned together, and even be grossed out together.

All in all, a fun book. Can work as a family bonding activity or for entomophiles to check out their knowledge. Definitely not for entomophobes – they will freak out even more at the sight of an innocent insect! 😄

My thanks to author James Warwood for providing me with a complimentary copy of ‘Truth or Poop? Interesting Insects’. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

The book is available on Kindle Unlimited.

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